


The Girl Who Lived in a Book

by Windian



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fairy Tale Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 02:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15764913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windian/pseuds/Windian
Summary: "There was once a maiden, or, if you prefer, a princess. A peasant girl. A washerwoman- these are all revisions in the same edition, and matter very little- who dwelled deep inside the forest and lived inside a book."A story about stories and their creation, and love.





	The Girl Who Lived in a Book

 

There is no history in this world, only stories. Stories of love, loss, betrayal, of reincarnation, rebirth, all written down in the eternal book that lies at the end of the universe, called life. Stories that pretend to be fact when in fact all fact is fiction, starting with this fact, right here. Stories that get lost inside stories, which get lost inside stories, which are tangled up, knotted, to which all you can do is knot it up a bit more, all written down in the book called life. Stories which become broken up, scattered like passing blossoms through the era, become the seeds to new stories, new lives; forgotten; remembered; reborn, in the great cycle of rebirth told in the book called life.

The following story is about how the art of storytelling was forgotten, and with an act of love, reborn anew.

There was once a maiden, or, if you prefer, a princess. A peasant girl. A washerwoman- these are all revisions in the same edition, and matter very little- who dwelled deep inside the forest and lived inside a book. In the land where four rivers joined like entwined fingers and the spirit of magic shimmered in air like midsummer heat, the maiden who dwelled inside the forest lived inside a book. Such a gentle girl, a graceful girl, to which the pains and horrors of the world twanged like a tuning fork, who moved as if a dream, lived in a dream, dwelled deep inside the forest and lived inside a book.

But to begin with, she was a terribly ordinary girl.

Her father was the master of the library. Her mother, the mistress. Together, the three of them lived in the great archive that exists in the forest at the end of the world, where every book written is stored side by side, line after line, row after row, in a silence as deep and dark as eternity. In that land, the art of storytelling had long been forgotten, but the relics of that era remained, guarded carefully by a hundred generations. The maiden's mother had two children; the maiden herself, and the silence of the library. She nurtured it like an egg, hushed the rustling crows that made their nests in the rafters and shushed the dormice that forgot to squeak in a whisper. Her father was the book binder. With his glasses slipping down his nose, he would lovingly and painstakingly rebind the ancient books that became tattered, handling them more tenderly than if he were fixing the wing of a baby bird. He bound books all day and all night, and at the early hours of the morning the maiden would sometimes sit with him, listening to the rooks crooning quietly as her father bound books by candlelight.

As for the maiden herself, she was somewhat of an enigma. The master and mistress of the library had been blessed with just one child, and it wouldn’t have been more surprising if sparrows had given birth to a dove. The master and mistress were as pale as the moon, with hair as dark as night, but their daughter had hair as yellow as cornflowers, skin as brown as a nut. Her mother and father lived and breathed books, but the maiden loved the forest. Loved the trees, standing tall and proud in quiet mystery and the sunshine that cast prismatic diamonds on the forest floor and sparkled on her skin and made her dazzle. Loved life, was made dizzy and drunk by the love of it, spun round and round by the sunlit pools, gurgling a laugh, was made a young child again.

The darkness of the library was oppressive to her. As a baby, it made her strike up a constant wail that disturbed the silence her mother so carefully tended. Till the mother of the maiden was forced into the open air and sunshine that stung her eyes, to consult the blind shaman who lived on the edge of the forest.

She said; “My husband and I are librarians. We come from a long line of librarians. Since the beginning of the world, for as long as there have been stories to tell, and even now, when the art has been lost, we have been librarians. But my daughter cannot stand the library. She does not like the dark. When I read to her, she cries. How can a child of librarians hate the library?”

The blind shaman consulted his almanac. He groaned and wailed. He said;

“You are the wife of the darkness, she the bride of the forest. You cannot bend another’s nature to fit your own, without breaking it.” The shaman gave the maiden’s mother a bundle of ash twigs wrapped in twine. “Make for the child a bower of ash wood and moss. Construct it between the two tallest, ancient trees in the forest. She will live a thousand stories in her life, but she will never be a librarian.”

The mother of the maiden was confused but did as was instructed, and made for the baby the bower made of twigs and moss. The baby was quieted. She gurgled.

And as the maiden grew, happy and carefree in the forest, her one sadness that she and her beloved mother and father should have to live in separate worlds. So day after day, she learned to step into the library a little more, so that little by little, the shadows seemed to shrink, though they never stopped looking like strange frightening shapes. And the shimmering spirits that pushed the trolleys and the spirits that sat in their coats and hats with lanterns of wilo’wisps were so different than the kindly nymphs she played with by the pools and the willowy tree women who could be there one moment, and gone the next. All the same, she tried, and her parents loved her for her for this, and her mother taught her to read, her father, to bind books.

And yet still, she disliked books, as she disliked reading, and she could never shake off the cool chill of her mother's disappointment. Books seemed to her a dead thing. They were words on a page; they meant nothing to her-- they weren't real. She still loved the sunshine, loved the air, and would sit in the bright coolness of the shade, singing aloud to her forest friends. She had an unknown talent for spinning stories. She span them out of air, span them into silver sparkling cobwebs that enraptured. Why sit and read dusty tomes when she could weave her own? From dawn till dusk, she sat with an audience of antelopes, deer, and nymphs, all listening as she wove tales out of nothing, into threads of gold that mesmerised. Many creatures travelled from far to hear her. The birds of the forest quietened to listen, and even the trees bent their branches over to hear her speak.

To her parents, she spoke none of this. Her mother shook her head at her daughter's flights of fancy-- after all, there was no such thing as _new_ stories.

It was not until her thirteenth year that tragedy, once only words on a page, struck. The maiden's father died. The little maiden cried tears of gold and silver into the well in the wood, her hair dripping down the ancient stone like water.

“There is nothing good in this world,” she said.

“Everything beautiful perishes,” she said.

“If we are all going to die some day, what's the point of even living?” she said.

She cried so pitifully, her tears sending arcs of ripples across the water, that she woke the heart of the enchantress who dwelled within the well. She kissed away the maiden's tears and offered her one wish.

“I want to disappear,” said the maiden.

But the enchantress, who had long watched the maiden for many moons, and loved her, could bring upon herself to offer the death she sought. But now the wish was promised, she could not take it away. Instead, she wove over her the kindest spell she knew, casting it upon the maiden like a jewelled net.

When the maiden returned to the great library in the forest she appeared as if in a dream. And the first thing she did was pick the first book off the shelf she saw, and began reading. Her mother, even burdened down by her heavy mourning robes, was astounded. She watched as her daughter turned page after page, not glancing up for an instant. And her astonishment was doubled when, as soon as she had finished the book, she put it down and picked up another. So absorbed in her reading was she that she did not respond when her mother spoke to her. Nor did she stop after a third book, nor a fourth.

For a whole week, the maiden did nothing but read.

Her mother said to herself, “She is grieving. I will let her be.”

But when one week became two, became three, and still the maiden uttered not a word, worry began to descend upon her like a shroud.

Meanwhile, the maiden read:

Love stories,

Sad stories,

Epics,

Poems by famous poets,

Poems by lesser poets,

haikus,

trebauchets,

war stories,

coming of age stories,

Stories about girls living in books,

and--

When she slept, she slept with a book balanced on her nose, as her eyes moved under her eyelids, as if even then, she was still reading. And when she ate, she ate with one hand, even then still reading. She spoke not a word, moved as if in a dream, lived in a dream and was even then, still reading.

And when she read love stories, she moved about in a flutter, swooning, sighing, so that her mother knew that her sickness must be a love sickness. But then, when she read sad stories, she sighed again, sighing as though her heart would break. Sighed and mooned so softly that her mother knew her sickness must be of heartbreak. And yet, when she read comedies, she would break into an irrepressible guffaw, laughed so hard she'd run right out of puff, and then laugh some more, and her mother knew that her daughter must have gone mad.

She shook her. She poured cold water over her. She did what she would never have dreamed of doing, and took her books away from her. But when the maiden did not read, she sat, blank, did not laugh or smile, simply stared.

In desperation, the maiden's mother returned to the shaman who lived on the edge of the forest. She said;

“My daughter has not spoken for more than three moons. She does not look at me. Or when she does, she does not see me. She has become a great burden to me. My black mourning clothes are heavy enough without a daughter to worry about, too. She no longer goes into the forest. She does not frollick in the pools. She does not bring me stories of nymphs and dryads. She does nothing, except read.”

The shaman rattled a fistful of bones that chattered like teeth and threw them out over the table. He consulted his beaten, brown almanac with the eyes in his hand. He said; “Before you came to me to me desperate that she would read. Now, once again you return, and you wish that she would stop.” Then he said, “Very well.” He tossed the bones again and told the maiden's mother that a great and powerful enchantment was placed upon her daughter. The mother begged the shaman for a way to lift the enchantment.

He shut his almanac with a snap. “Your daughter had the power to throw off the spell whenever she chooses. She simply doesn't want to.”

The harsh mistress of the library, stern keeper of the silence, then wept. She wept long and hard, that she should lose both her husband and her daughter, that the shaman felt sorry for her. He packed away his bones and took of fhis feather headdress and said, “Off the record, there is a way to return your daughter to her former self. However, if it is successful, she may choose to leave the library forever. Are you prepared for that?”

Still weeping, her mother nodded.

The blind shaman said, “You must send out a proclamation to the four corners of the land of a beautiful maiden in trance, living in a book. You must write to all the princes of the all the kingdoms. And you must offer her hand in marriage, to any who can awaken her.”

The maiden's mother hesitated. She confided, “I'm not sure I want her dating so young.”

Nevertheless, with a heavy heart, she understood she had little choice. Under the shelter of twilight, she went to the spirits of the wind who blew the proclamation across the land.

And they came: warriors and scholars; river gods and princes; beautiful boys and ugly lads; rogues disguised as lords and three dwarfs, standing on one another's head; paupers and pretty girls; pipers and drummers; thieves and kings; gnomes from secret underground lands; tree gods, tall as cedars and men with twelve fingers; handsome dryads playing harpsichords that set all to slumber and half-men, half-fish fish on huge bassoons. They all heard the rumour the maiden's mother had blown across the wind like ash, and all came to see the young woman who dwelled within the forest and lived inside a book.

The silent forest, with the quiet lap of water, or wings, and muffled giggles, burst into the flower of song. A sea of striped tents arose outside the library. An impromptu orchestra of freaks played into the night, every night, on strange screaming instruments stolen from spirits. Instead of a gentle chorus of bird song, each day as greeted with the sharp blast from a bugaloo horn. Strange, new creatures began to be seen in the woods; every evening, the growling of the grizzygrumpies. The warbling of wickwobblers. The shrieking of the squealscrawlers.

So began the suitors wooing of the maiden.

As she wandered through the trees men dropped to their knees and professed their undying love, and she walked passed them. As she laid by the pools with the sunlight splayed across the water and the mermen offered her the treasure of atlantis, she turned the next page. When the king of a distant land presented to her a thousand roses from a dozen wagons, she picked one up, chewed it absently, and wandered on. Musicians composed for her famous love songs, fiddlers played with ferocity, hard players plucked until their fingers bled. Still, the maiden was not moved. Her enchantment became a golden era for art and music. Many a masterpiece was composed, but as for our maiden? Unmoved. She appeared even not to listen. The famous violinist played for her a song of such power that for fifty square miles around, ever young maiden fell deeply in love. Our maiden? She was reading a book of comic poetry at the time and burst out, in the violinist’s heart-wrenching crescendo, into guffaws of laughter. The violinist was so crushed by this he threw down his instrument, and never picked it up in his life again.

As the seasons changed, many suitors suffered such disappointments, and many went home. Those that remained became sour and disgruntled. They became bad house guests, eating the maiden's mother out of house and home. Worse, they fought between themselves, and worse still, they disturbed the silence of the library.

All this weighed heavily on the heart of the maiden's mother. Books were thrown around, abused, not put away in their proper places. She had no husband to rebind the books, and no daughter- not any more- who she could lay her woes upon.

As the seasons turned to years and the years fell away so did the suitors, until only twenty of the most determined, and most rowdy remained. The maiden came into her womanhood, every day became more graceful, the softness of her body becoming long and willowy. When the sunshine hit the right angles of her face, the suitors discovered, as though she were an archaeological find waiting in the dark, that she was beautiful. They became more persistent. They began looking for something to blame for their continued failure. They blamed one another; they blamed the mother of the maiden for setting them an impossible task; the blamed the maiden herself, for her continued refusal of their advances.

There was one alone that refrained from the fighting, the endless squabbling, the squandering of the maiden's mother's household. She set herself apart from the other suitors with her silence. Barely grown out of girlhood, she blended into the background, and her one magic was her anonymity. She was not beautiful, like the blond haughty princes who travelled with entire entourages, and fawned over themselves. Her beauty was one that had to be sought and found, like the unexpected loveliness of a weed that endures when the roses have perished. Her skin was the colour of fresh earth, her smile fresh and bright as new green grass. She was a prince's scribe, come to attend at her lord's side. She wrote for him his letters, kept his records. She wrote no words of her own. When the others had left she and her lord had stayed, and she matured from girlhood to womanhood in the groves of the wood at the end of the world. She spoke little, and preferred to listen, did not take part in her prince's wrestling matches but preferred to lie in the wood with the maiden to listen as she whispered little songs, songs the other suitors missed because they were wrestling. For a long time, she was simply content to watch the maiden. Even though in a dream, she saw how careful she was never to tread on a flower, how she never swatted an insect, and in this way she knew with a pang of great joy that was also pain that she had fallen in love with her.

Previously silent, she began to pester the mother of the maiden with her questions. When was her daughter struck down with the enchantment? What had she been doing? What was her favourite flower? What was her favourite part of the forest?

But the maiden's mother, ill-strung from four years of dealing with unruly suitors, snapped, “I do not know your name, nor do I care. For four years I have endured the presence of the suitors; to me you are all one and the same; a big pain. Because of you I have to work twice as hard. Because of you the silence of the library is disturbed. Because my husband is gone there is no one to bind the books. I have endured all this, but I will not endure any more of your questions.”

And in reply the scribe said, “May I help?”

The maiden's mother spluttered, “I beg your pardon?”

On her request, she taught her how to bind the books, how to reattach missing pages, fix spines come askew. In five days, she had learnt how, and soon asked, “Would you teach me how to catalogue the books?” and the mother of the maiden taught her, and in four days she could catalogue the books as well as she. She became her assistant, soon as adept as she in the running of the library. Then she made her last request; “Would you teach me how to write the books?”

She shook her head. “The art has been long lost. No new story has been created in a thousand years. No one knows how.”

The scribe said, “Your daughter does.”

Years before, the young scribe had been travelling with her prince through the forest, when they had stopped by a spring to drink. There they had spied a lovely young girl laying the woodland creatures to rapture with her tale. The prince had been taken with her beauty; the scribe, with the words that spilled from her lips.

The maiden's mother had concerned herself first and foremost, with the library. She had not known. Or: she had not let herself know. She went to bed, pulling her shawl closer over her, heavy with the burden of her regret.

For a year, the scribe studied the stories in the library. The mother of the maiden would peek in at midnight, clutching her nightgown, and find her still hunched over the books, the candles guttering.

Every night the suitors revelled. The gold and purple striped tents were alive with music and dancing, fire breathers and acrobats. And inside the library, the young woman sat alone, reading.

After a year and a day had passed, she came to the mother of the maiden with her discoveries.

“I'm beginning to work it out,” she told her. “It's to do with feelings. When I read a certain passage from a book it reminded me of the feeling when I stood on top of a mountain, with the wind tearing through my solitude. When I read another passage, I felt as I had felt tasting honey for the first time.”

“So is there a story for every feeling in the world?” she asked.

“Except for one,” she said, and she wouldn't explain any more.

Immediately, she set to work with her pen, tearing through leafs after leafs of parchment. The mother of the maiden watched with amazement, but soon her attention was focused elsewhere, for once more the suitors had begun to make trouble.

They came to her, on a morning that was a crisp as a russet apple. Never before had she seen them so organized, and their leader, a lord from a faraway country, began to speak. He said;

“Librarian, it has been five years since you set us our task. In five years, despite our efforts, none of us has managed to awaken your daughter. Five years we have wasted trying to win her hand. It has become evident to us that there is no way to cure her, and that you have, as they say, been having us on. Therefore we demand recompense. Whether or not she is awakened, one of us will have her hand in marriage. I propose a great tournament, the winner of which will marry your daughter.”

The mother of the maiden argued with him, but it was to no avail. The words went in one ear, out the other; they did not believe a word she said. At last, when she realised there was little else she could do, she said:

“Very well. I see there is nothing I can do to change your minds. But I will decide the nature of the tournament, and I will judge the winner. You all must create for me a great work of art; whether that be music, painting, sculpture or song, or else. The suitor who's work I decide contains the greatest amount of genius will have my daughter's hand.”

The artists among them begun to titter with pleasure. The lords and princes who had no artistic talent themselves fretted and fumed.

“Naturally,” the mother of the maiden said, “These works of art will take time. The tournament will be judged on the day of the summer solstice.”

So the axis of the year turned. No longer did the suitors while away the nights with their revelry; through the forest fell the changed silence of concentration, and the halting notes of a musician composing the chords for a new aria. The forest was touched with the colours of sepia; the leaves fell; snow touched the ground; it melted, and the buds gathered on the trees like little whispering creatures. Summer bloomed, sweet and sultry as an azalea.

It was the day of the summer solstice.

At the very heart of the forest, where the magic was as thick in the air as butter, the works of art were displayed. In the shimmering heat the mother of the maiden wore her thickest, darkest cloak, and stepped out to judge the works. After almost six years, the excitement and tension was strung tight as a bow's string. Only the maiden herself, perched on the bough of the great oak tree and stuck in nonfictional book about knitting, seemed entirely uninterested by the proceedings.

Her mother approached the first piece of art, the artist standing cockily by its side. The sculpture was very impressive; a man and woman in an embrace, so delicately crafted you could see the veins in the woman's hands. There was something all-consuming about it, and yet, a tenderness.

“This was inspired by my love for your daughter,” he announced.

Glancing it again however, she considered that like its creator, it was a bit loud.

The falsetto sung a tenor of magnificence; from the merman a hypnotic, strange warbling song; several artists had created several great landscapes; patron lords had produced pretty coloured glasswork and striking pottery. The scribe's prince, sweating, handed over a distinctly wonky earthenware pot.

After all the imposing statues and arias, the young scribe, with her small handbound book in hand, looked very drab. She stood last in line, and while the other suitors talked loudly of their works, she stood silently.

The maiden of the mother moved at last to her. “What have you to show me?” she asked.

Quietly she said, “I have written a book, inspired by my love for your daughter.”

Now the other suitors began to glance at the woman they'd barely acknowledged in their years together. Surely she was making it up; for, of course no one had penned a story in a thousand years. How ridiculous! They began to laugh at her amongst themselves.

Then the young scribe did something different; instead of giving the book to the maiden's mother, she crossed over to the maiden, sitting under the stencilled shade of the oak tree. With a degree of tenderness and ceremony she retrieved her book and put into her hands her own. Immediately the maiden turned the cover and began to read.

The suitors had gone very silent, watching. The young scribe, too, said nothing, though underneath her skin she was filled with nervous energy, a first time artist awaiting the pronouncement of her first critic. The maiden's eyes moved, back and forth, as she read.

As the hours went on, a uneasy feeling of boredom and nervous energy gripped the hearts of the suitors and the maiden's mother. The suitors set up camp, whispering to one another how the young scribe could have written the book, and whether or not it was a hoax. The maiden's mother waited as the young scribe waited, in silence, wringing the the band of her wedding ring.

To this day, only the scribe and the maiden know what the story she had written was about, the story she had wove around her feelings. Many would come to believe she had written the world's greatest love story, and yet, perhaps it was a tragedy, because as the maiden turned the final page her eyes began to fill with the glimmer of tears. They spilled over, and as they ran rivulets down her cheeks something changed in her eyes; a kind of awareness returned to them. She no longer looked past everything, but straight forward as she done as a child. Except she was no longer a child, but a woman, and she lifted her eyes from the page and said, “That was beautiful.” And then, “Will they write a sequel, do you think?”

Her mother fell upon her. “My daughter! My girl!” she exclaimed.

The maiden, who was having the life squeezed out of her, said, “Goodness gracious! Mother, whatever is all the fuss about?”

The suitors stood and stared, astounded. When the maiden saw them she asked, “And who are all these people?”

But now that she was awake for once, the suitors began to feel awfully shy. They grumbled and turned away; after all, they had lost.

She said; “It's so strange. It feels as though I haven't seen you in so long, Mother. Or myself. As though I've been sleeping all this time. But what fantastic dreams I had!”

The mother of the maiden took her hands. “My darling, this is the author the book you've just read. It's the first book to be written in a thousand years.”

She placed her daughter's hand, with a tiny bit of sadness, in the young scribe's. And as she looked up, she froze. She said breathlessly, “It's you!”

For the young scribe who had come among them so silently was no stranger. The scribe's words had been her own words. Her feelings had been her own feelings. She felt the water of the spring as though it ran cool and fresh through her fingers. She heard the sound of the wind moving through aching overhead boughs and leaves as through her own ears. The scribe had brought her out of her grief, delivered the forest she loved back to her. She squeezed her hand, beaming, and although their first meeting, it felt as though she'd known her all her life.

 


End file.
